Week In Review:Africa and Blockchain 🚀🎉
Web3 Afrika Dev Roundup Nov 7th-11th more fundings + partnership in Africa+ Techstars Toronto accelerator.+ +Highlight of the week
Friends, we're back! We're back to our regularly scheduled programming, if you’re new, welcome 🙌 you’ll receive a weekly like this one every Friday. For past essays and roundups, visit the previous articles. In today's Edition👇
Funding Announcements✨
➥MoneyFellows, a fintech startup based in Egypt, has closed a $31 million Series B round of funding.
MoneyFellows,a mobile app that modernizes the traditional Egyptian and Arab practice of “Gameya,” also known as a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA), promotes financial inclusion and the digital transformation of Egypt, and it has grown to be one of the market’s leading fintech. They intend to expand geographically into Asia and Africa.
➥African fintech startups focusing on financial inclusion are in line to benefit from
QuonaCapital $332m fund.
The emerging markets VC firm announced on Tuesday the final close of $332 million for its Fund III. It focuses its investments on innovative technology companies that are expanding access to financial services for underserved consumers and businesses in Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and MENA.
➥ Egyptian fintech startup, Blnk raises $32 million across pre-seed and seed rounds.
Blnk’s solution, a digital lending platform that provides point-of-sale loans to Egyptians with repayment periods between six and 36 months has raised $32 million in its pre-seed and seed rounds. The funding was led by Dubai-based Emirates International Investment Company (EIIC) and Egypt-based Sawari Ventures, with several local and international angel investors joining.
➥Algerian startup Yassir has raised $150 million Series B, the biggest tech fund round in North Africa.
Founded in 2017, Yassir is on a mission to help usher Africa into a digital economy era.Its is a super app that provides its users with a suite of services, including ridesharing, grocery deliveries, and financial services. It operates in 45 cities across six countries throughout the world, and has more than eight million users.
➥MasterCard launches CryptoSecure, a new addition to blockchain security
Mastercard has introduced a new piece of secure crypto software that will assist banks in identifying and blocking transactions from fraudulent crypto exchanges.Its AI capabilities allow this sophisticated software to determine the risk of a crime associated with crypto exchanges on the Mastercard payment network.
Partnerships🤝
➥Data Mynt and Alibaba Cloud Partner to Accelerate Crypto Adoption.
Data Mynt and Alibaba Cloud Announced Partnership to Accelerate Crypto and Cloud Adoption in Africa and Latin America. With the massive adoption they have seen in the markets, the partnership supports Data Mynt and Alibaba Cloud's international strategy while solving major pain points for their Cloud customer base.
The partnership includes three parts: first, enabling Alibaba Cloud customers to pay for their Cloud services using Data Mynt’s crypto as currency option; second, listing and selling Data Mynt services to Cloud customers on Alibaba Cloud International Marketplace; and third, bringing advanced, secure and reliable cloud and web3.0 services and technologies to businesses in Africa, Latin America and beyond.
➥Finastra & Modefin to Provide Fintech Solutions in Africa & India
Finastra, a global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, and Modefin, a global fintech solution provider helping banks to thrive in the digital age, announced their partnership to offer Finastra’s Fusion Trade Innovation and Fusion Essence solutions to banks in Africa and several Indian subcontinent markets.
With Finastra’s solutions, Modefin will help its customers embrace open finance today and future-proof their banking and global trade operations.
➥9 African startups have been selected to participate in the latest edition of Techstars Toronto accelerator.
The 13-week program will provide participants with mentorship, funding, and access to the Techstars network.
Highlight of the week👌
➥Kenya launches the first-ever blockchain-based healthcare solution
Kenyan-based AfyaRekod, the first-ever blockchain-based healthcare solution, has launched a fully automated Universal Patient Portal (UPP)
Afya Rekod, through a secure central platform (Rekod.com), will enable patients and medical professionals to have real-time access to their health data and medical history
Thanks for reading👌
Contact us: NGENI Linktree
Shiko Karanja✍
About NGENI🔥
NGENI is Kenya and East Africa's first pure-play and largest Blockchain & Web3 development engineering Studio with a 60-plus-person team. The studio recruits and trains recent graduates from STEM Universities across Kenya and today has twenty-five (25) talented developers, at our Kilimani Headquarters.
All engineers have successfully taken on complex coding challenges, and hackathons and have ultimately delivered on complex multi-Blockchain applications, bots, and dApps for international projects.